Select committee: Finance Bill Sub-Committee
Conclusion 18
3rd Report - Research and development tax relief and expenditure credit
Published 31 Jan 2023
Paragraph 108
Finance Bill Sub-Committee Draft Finance Bill 2022-23 All items in this report Report on parliament.uk ↗ Inquiry on parliament.uk ↗
Conclusion (the committee's words)
For R&D relief to work as an incentive of R&D activity, businesses need to know not only that it exists, but what it covers. The Government needs to ensure that SMEs have access to information about R&D relief. This information should be clear, accurate and simple to understand so that SMEs can easily identify whether R&D relief is relevant to what they do and, if it is, work out what steps they need to take to claim it. We agree with our witnesses that the Government needs to take control of the narrative of what qualifies as eligible R&D.
From: Finance Bill Sub-Committee, 3rd Report - Research and development tax relief and expenditure credit, paragraph 108, 31 January 2023
Government response
The government responded to the whole report on 13 April 2023 (deadline 31 March 2023).
Summary written by Accountability Index from the government's response. It is not the government's own words.The Government thanks the Committee and "notes its conclusions and recommendations", accepting some recommendations in full, some partially, and not accepting others.
- It does not accept the recommendation to drop the six-month claim notification requirement, saying it responds to "high levels of error and fraud" and limits "bulk claims for multiple earlier years".
- It does not accept the recommendation that relief payments carry a warning about later recovery, saying existing guidance gives "sufficient warning" and a new customer contact point would add resource and IT costs.
- On overseas expenditure, it partially accepts the call for transitional relief. The restriction now starts on 1 April 2024, with narrow exemptions, and it does not think further exemptions are necessary.
- On a merged R&D scheme, the Government is "currently considering the responses and no decision has been made", and intends "to keep open the option" of a merged scheme from April 2024.